Marine Le Pen's Front National has dropped a candidate for municipal elections
after she compared the country's black justice minister to a monkey

Anne-Sophie Leclere, the FN candidate for Rethel in the northeastern Ardennes region, provoked a storm by comparing Justice Minister Christiane Taubira to a monkey on French television.

It is an embarrassing blow to Marine Le Pen, the leader of the party, who has threatened to sue anyone who calls them "extreme Right".

On her Facebook page, Miss Leclere, 33, who runs a fishing shop, placed a photomontage placing a picture of a baby monkey, with the caption: "At 18 months" next to one of Miss Taubira, with the caption: "Now".

Quizzed by Envoyé Spécial (Special Envoy), an investigative TV programme that unearthed the montage, she said it had "nothing to do with racism" as "a monkey remains an animal while a black is a human".

But she went on to say: "To be honest, I'd rather see her in the branches of a tree than in the government." "Quite frankly, she's a savage when she arrives with a devilish grin. But it's not racist."

Miss Taubira, from French Guiana, did not react immediately to the comments.

But anti-racism groups seized on it as a sign that despite Marine Le Pen's claims to have "de-demonised" the party, "we can see the real face of the Front National".

"I'm appalled at what I heard but not fundamentally surprised," said Alain Jakubowicz, head of the League against Racism and Anti-Semitism, Licra.

"She expressed out loud what those in the Front National think to themselves." "Marine Le Pen is trying to make us believe that the Front National is not an extreme-Right party, but once again, here is the flagrant proof," said Aline Bail-Krémer of SOS Racisme.

François de Rugy, a Greens MP, said the comments were "very shocking". "It shows there is a form of freedom in France of racist comments." The FN reacted swiftly to the report, suspending Miss Leclere from the party and summoning her to its disciplinary committee.

Florian Philippot, FN vice-president, called the choice of Miss Leclere a "casting error" that swiftly remedied.

"We will be even more careful in the future," he said. "I have just spoken to Marine Le Pen on the phone and she said to me: 'If we need to do it 10 times, we'll do it 10 times'".

But he said he had "no lessons to take from parties who keep their black sheep", referring to a Socialist senatorial assistant who called FN MP Marion Marchéal-Le Pen, Marine Le Pen's niece, a "slut and a bitch".

The controversy comes as the FN is enjoying a surge in the polls, with one suggesting it could reap 24 per cent of the vote in next May's European elections in France – the highest of any party.